


Some Sort of Saint

by hitchcock_blonde



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alice/Handguns, Angsty Fix-It, Badass Alice, Betty's Not Okay But Holding On For Now face, Dark!Alice, F/M, Fiercely protective Alice, Fix-It of Sorts, Hal Cooper deserves every ounce of hatred, I NEEDED THIS, Manipulation, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Power Dynamics, Self-Worth Issues, Serpent!Alice, Trust Issues, Unhealthy Relationships, because you know Hal's going to be redeemed in canon, dark!betty, protective!jughead, so I wrote it, tbh this is catharsis on my part
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-28 19:53:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10838262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitchcock_blonde/pseuds/hitchcock_blonde
Summary: Hal and Alice stood on opposite sides for their wedding photos.In one of the pictures, Forsythe Jones was between them like a dark-eyed, stubble-chinned shadow. He had his arm flung around Hal (on the right), and their strained buck-toothed grins matched. Between Forsythe and Alice (on the left) was a blank space. Alice_Forsythe&Hal. It was a lying picture. Everything about it was a lie.When Polly was born, Hal hissed “you need to scream” in Alice’s ear. “You have to scream. They always scream.” She kept her mouth glued shut. Not a sound came out.Polly was born crying. Neither Hal nor Alice knew how to calm her down. It took time for Alice to find the right way to hold her and stroke her hair and whisper, “It’s not over yet. You need to hold on. We’re not out yet.”Betty was a silent baby. The first thing she did was curl her hands into tight little fists. It took her a week to learn how to open them. By the time Betty was born, Polly wasn’t crying anymore.Seventeen years later, they sat on either ends of the table and waited while the sun set and the world went dark around them. He never met her eyes.Or: Alice takes a stand, and every action has an equal opposite reaction.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter is Alice/Hal centric, so I'm tagging the fic based on that, but later on it's going to center around Bughead, with Cheronica to come. It won't always be this angsty, I promise, but it probably will be for a while...lol. Stick around, guys!  
> Also, massive trigger warning. Be prepared.

Hal and Alice stood on opposite sides for their wedding photos.

She remembered the details of that day with all the clarity of 20/20 hindsight. _“I do,”_ she said, and _“I do,”_ he said, and _“You may now kiss the bride—“_ But she kissed him first, hands curling almost instinctively into his hair, filed-to-a-point nails digging brutally into his scalp, one leg kicked back as she bit his lip so hard it bled. He only held her tighter.

In one of the pictures, Forsythe Jones was between them like a dark-eyed, stubble-chinned shadow. He had his arm flung around Hal (on the right), and their strained buck-toothed grins matched. Between Forsythe and Alice (on the left) was a blank space. _Alice_Forsythe &Hal._ It was a lying picture. Everything about it was a lie.

 

_Seventeen years later, they sat on either ends of the table and waited while the sun set and the world went dark around them. He never met her eyes._

When Polly was born, Hal hissed _“you need to scream”_ in Alice’s ear. _“You have to scream. They always scream.”_ She kept her mouth glued shut. Not a sound came out.

Polly was born crying. Neither Hal nor Alice knew how to calm her down. It took time for Alice to find the right way to hold her and stroke her hair and whisper, “It’s not over yet. You need to hold on. We’re not out yet.”

Betty was a silent baby. The first thing she did was curl her hands into tight little fists. It took her a week to learn how to open them. By the time Betty was born, Polly wasn’t crying anymore.

 

_It was midnight when Alice Cooper made the first move._

_“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me sooner.”_

_Hal smiled._

He wore a green tie to the wedding. No one knew why but the two of them. Maybe FP guessed; Alice would never know.

If someone had asked, he’d probably have said: “Well, I like the way green looks when it’s with white.”

 

_“Tell you what, sweetie?”_

_“That you’re a—“ Her lips curled around the word. “Blossom.”_

_His eyes widened, shining with that sort of manic glint that she could still see in the gaze of her eldest daughter. (The glint that made her want to cut out Polly’s eyes with a knife so that she never saw it again.) “Why would I?”_

_Alice almost laughed at that. Her face contorted into an ugly grimace. “Because it would have saved everyone so much pain,” she hissed—because Polly had Jason Blossom’s incestuous twin babies inside of her, and that hadn’t changed, and he could have stopped all of it with a word. Because something had snapped inside of Alice when she had screamed at him to leave, and she knew what he’d broken in her was irreplaceable. Because she didn’t know what she was fighting for anymore, but she knew that she couldn’t keep looking him in the eyes. Because he’d sealed everything that was going to happen on this night, he’d sealed everything that she would do, not her, and she’d wanted it to be her—because_ he’d _made the dream messy and bloody and ugly, and Alice didn’t want—hadn’t wanted—she loathed to let go of it just yet, and it was all his fault. All of it was_ his.

_“Why do you think I didn’t tell you, Alice?” His voice was vaguely disappointed. “I knew you’d react like this.”_

_“You didn’t trust me,” she whispered. “I’m your wife.”_

_Hal’s eyebrows shot up. “Of course I didn’t,” he chuckled. “Our marriage is a farce.” When she exhaled shakily and sneered at him like the worst nightmare she’d become, he wheedled, “Alice—look me in the eye and tell me you love me.”_

_She met his gaze evenly. “You’re a monster.”_

_“No, Alice. You are.” He stared at her smugly like some sort of saint. “You’re right. I don’t trust you. Do you blame me?”_

_She considered that._

_“No.”_

_He smiled._

_“There was something else I wanted to ask you about,” Alice continued. Her right hand crept stealthily into her purse. She clutched the cold hard grip of the handgun until it was all she could feel._

Green and white. But which was which?

 

_“Polly’s grades, of course. I’m thinking she should just take twice as many classes next year to retake the ones she missed—“_

_In a swift motion, Alice levelled her gun at his head. Her knuckles were white. Hal laughed lowly. “Try.”_

_She tightened her grip, eyes narrowed._

_“They’ll all know,” he told her. “You’ll lose everything. Your daughters, your money, your clothes, your whole life. You’ll go to jail, Alice, and I’m assuming you know everything that entails. Your precious white picket fence? Gone.”_

_“What if I don’t care?” Alice’s voice shook, but her hands didn’t._

_“Then I’d be dead by now. You’re out of practice, sweetheart. Serpents have to shed their skin eventually. You’re not going to ki—“_

_Blam. Blam._

_Blam._


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Betty really, really wants to slow the plot down and figure this out, but unfortunately for her, I'm the author here. Also, Jughead has nightmares--what else is new--and is DEFINITELY not in the slightest worried about Betty. Nope, nada, no way.

Jughead Jones was trapped. Winding tendrils of grey wool encircled him lazily, drawing tight around his arms, his legs, his waist, his neck. He hung limp as they reeled him in. Jellybean withered while reaching for him and faded away into dust. He tried to apologize with his eyes, tried to say  _ please don’t go,  _ but she wasn’t looking. Betty held his hand for a while, but then Clifford Blossom shot her between the eyes— _ Blam— _ and he stared tonelessly as she vanished. Jughead’s grey hair was hanging about him. It had grown so long that it tangled in his scratchy chains and rendered both indistinguishable. Clifford turned to him and held out the gun, or maybe he was aiming it—Jughead didn’t know the difference anymore— _ blam,  _ but the bullet glanced off of Jughead’s cocoon uselessly and fell to the ground. Wool climbed and wound around Jughead’s face, crawling into his nostrils, wriggling in his ears. It gave his eyes and the space between them a wide berth, and that was where Clifford aimed next. This time, Jughead knew—this was it; this time, he was going to die. FP loomed up in the doorway, and when Jughead tried to yell, he shook his head and dissolved into voiceless shadows. Jughead choked.  _ I’m going to die,  _ but his feet itched.  _ Clifford fired— _

His eyes snapped open.

_ Blam.  _ It sounded distant, muffled, almost as though—

Archie was snoring on the other side of the room. The blankets were stifling, so he threw them off, feeling cold sweat trickle down his back. Jughead swung his legs off the side of the bed and crammed his feet into scuffed navy flip-flops. He snatched up his phone, checked the time—12:13 AM—and slid it into his pocket. Most likely, the gunshot was a figment of his imagination. But Jughead felt his heart racing as he tiptoed out of the house and into the shadows of the waiting night.

(It was probably nothing.)

\--

Betty had woken up when the faint sound of raised voices started filtering into her bedroom. She was halfway down the stairs when she heard the first gunshot. She took the rest three at a time. (It wasn’t fast enough.) She came bursting into the kitchen just in time to see—to see her father’s _head_ on the _table_ in a pool of _blood_ with her mother standing over him, _holding a_ _gun, God, what was_ — “Mom. Mom—Mom. M—Mom, what—I—what the hell, Mom—?”

“Elizabeth.” Her face contorted into a wild snarl. Betty shook with rage and confusion and horror at the triumph in her mother’s eyes. Everything slowed.

“You killed Dad,” she whispered.

Alice Cooper breathed in shallowly, sinking down onto a chair and letting the gun fall from her fingers.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she said, but she’d  _ fired the gun,  _ hadn’t she? She’d…

“What the  _ hell,”  _ Betty murmured, shaking, “is  _ that  _ supposed to mean…”

“It’s a long story,” she started frantically, her voice climbing. “It’s complicated, but you need to hear me out—“

“No!” This was a nightmare. It couldn’t be real. “I don’t understand, I don’t know what’s happening, I don’t get any of it, I don’t  _ want  _ to—“

“Elizabeth!” Her mom’s hand gripped her arm out of nowhere. Betty was reminded forcibly of Penelope Blossom. She jerked free, stumbling back blindly.

“You—you killed Dad,” Betty said numbly. “You need to leave.”

Alice’s eyes widened. “Betty—“

“Get out.”

Her mother hesitated. In that moment, something  _ snapped  _ inside Betty with force. She shoved past Alice, past the slumped corpse of her dead father, without looking back. Blood was pumping like fire and burning her from the inside.

Betty flung open the door, because this was the final straw. No more—she couldn’t take any more. It was over, the end of an era, Betty running while Rome burned.

\--

Jughead rested his forehead against the cool glass of Betty’s window and didn’t panic.

Betty was fine. She probably just went down to get a glass of water and—(got shot in the head)—and drank it, and was  _ on her way back up,  _ at which point she would sleep the rest of the night peacefully and she was  _ not dead  _ or bleeding out in a closet, and he had just imagined that gunshot, and--in any case, Jughead reminded himself firmly, she could take care of herself, there was no reason to freak out, but this was  _ Riverdale _ and Clifford Blossom had murdered his own son and then swung from the rafters, and no one was more formidable than Clifford Blossom…except for maybe Cheryl--that slap had hurt _. _ And—oh shit—Betty’s mom had taken Grundy’s gun from her room, what if she still had it—Alice Cooper wouldn’t hurt her own daughter— _ Jason Blossom’s head slumping onto his chest, his father’s stony face— _ this was  _ Riverdale— _ the town with PEP! and a half dozen psychopaths on the side—

He fell rather than climbed down the ladder and ran headlong into Betty halfway through dialing 9-1-1. She had that sort of dazed expression that meant she was Not Okay but holding on for an indefinite period of time until some undefined greater evil had passed. But she was  _ alive,  _ and Jughead felt weak at the knees with relief.

“Jug,” she said harshly, “we’re getting out of here.”

**Author's Note:**

> So somehow this fix-it fic is angsty already. XD  
> Comments and kudos are beautiful, wonderful things. ^.^


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